It’s been a few months since Emily began tending to those dead sticks, and here is her orchid proudly displaying its beauty.
Are you in a “dead sticks” season of your marriage? Are you staring at something that once was bright and beautiful and now looks dim and dying? How can you know if your marriage still has beauty in it, if it’s still worth tending to, or if it is actually already dead?
Research from the Institute for American Values asserts that couples who push through a hard season report being happier five years after the strain than they were before. Look at what Mona Charen says in her article “Happy Marriages and Unhappy Divorces”…
“According to the survey conducted by a team of family researchers, unhappily married adults who divorced were no happier five years after the divorce than were equally unhappy marrieds who remained together. And two-thirds of unhappily married people who remained married reported that their marriages were happy five years later. Even among those who had rated their marriages as “very unhappy,” nearly 80 percent said they were happily married five years later. These were not merely bored or dissatisfied whiners. They had endured serious problems, including alcoholism, infidelity, verbal abuse, emotional neglect, depression, illness, and work and money troubles.”
In our nearly 10 years of marriage, my husband and I have traveled roads together that did not appear to be leading us to anything beautiful. We lost sight of our hopes and plans, we lost sight of each other. Still, we kept traveling and neither of us left the other behind. Many times I thought we might take separate exits on this marriage journey, but instead we held hands and kept looking forward. Eventually we were able to see the beauty again, like turning the corner on the 405 to see that majestic face of Mount Rainier or witnessing a bloom begin to emerge from a once very dead looking orchid.
The beauty never left our marriage. We found the beauty again by taking on some new perspectives on our perpetual issues. We found it again by taking the time to nurture fondness and admiration in the middle of our frustration with each other. We found it again when we decided to lay down our preferences and sacrifice instead. The beauty in our marriage never left, it was just out of sight for a little while.
If you’re in a tough season, I’m praying for you to have the strength to keep going, keep tending, keep nurturing, and keep investing in your relationship. I’m praying you’ll experience the beauty on the other side when you choose together to #staymarried.
This article originally appeared at StayMarriedBlog.com.
Special thanks to Emily Allen for allowing me to share her beautiful words and images here. Emily lives with her husband and six kids in Seattle, Washington. She is a contemplative, creative soul who celebrates the beauty of a humble, handmade life. Her days are full of laughs, epic messes, and lots of learning alongside her kids. She is the founder of Kindred Mom, a blog and an online community dedicated to helping women flourish in motherhood. Her personal blog is Light and Loveliness and she is on Instagram as @emily_sue_allen.
